Suppose we should try and catch up. We’d left it so long we were thinking about doing a double round-up after the matches taking place at the minute, but then we thought about how long that article would end up being and decided we had to do some nettle grasping.

Middlesex didn’t play…

So Yorkshire clawed back some ground. They were playing Nottinghamshire, which apparently guarantees you a load of points these days. Despite being 51-6 in their first innings, they won by 305 runs. Andy Hodd and Azeem Rafiq – neither of whom are first-choice players – salvaged that innings and then Tim Bresnan and Jack Brooks hoovered up wickets either side of a Gary Ballance hundred. When the dust settled, Yorkshire were five points adrift of the leaders.

Surrey are still winning

It’s very unsettling. They were playing Lancashire, who appear to have undergone some sort of metamorphosis in the close season, from a competent bowling/inept batting side to a competent batting/ineffectual bowling side. Mark Footitt took seven in the second innings and might finally feel a bit better about leaving Derbyshire for Surrey.

Hampshire are second from bottom

Ahead of Nottinghamshire, but they did at least draw with Somerset. Sean Ervine hit a hundred in each innings, but the match was most notable for Roelof van der Merwe and Craig Overton putting on a couple of hundred run for Somerset’s ninth wicket.

Durham are third from bottom

But have a game in hand on Hampshire. They also drew. Jeetan Patel took five for Warwickshire in their first innings, but Mark Stoneman and Scott Borthwick made daddy fifties to deliver this season’s de rigueur rain-affected draw.

We’ve always struggled with a competition that comes to a climax during the autumn, a month after the quarter finals. The teams change, form fades away, the weather intervenes, no-one watches. The final always seems so detached from all that went before.

Missed this on account of it being in Division 2, but still, wow… how did this come about?! Struggling to decide if that, the Mo’ Irfan wide or the fan falling over the fence trying to take a catch during four four four for three and all that is the most spectacular cricketing occurence of a crazy week…

King Cricket readers might be interested in my report from Lord’s last Saturday, in which I report getting more runs personally than England in the Trent Bridge ODI and I also bring an update report on The Home of Corks position: